Ok, so some things in the golden era were not too cool...

[LizzieMaine]

I for one feel there should be a single nationally-recognized age of majority that applies to everything.

I agree with that. It ought to be 25. Or, the rate we're going these days, maybe even 30.

 

[HudsonHawk]

A couple of random thoughts:

1. I've only read one book that was specifically a history of Prohibition. It was Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent. I thought it was pretty good. The first third of the book was eye opening. In the decades leading up to Prohibition, alcohol abuse was rampant. America really *was* a nation of drunks.

2. To Senor Crunk's point...we really are incongruous in our designated ages for various social legalities, from the age of military service and drinking and smoking to the age at which you can rent a pornographic video. In that same state where you must be 21 to rent said sexually-oriented video, the age of sexual consent is 16, as is the age at which one can marry. So do we really think that renting a movie depicting people having sex is so much more an important social responsibility than actually *having* sex? Of course not. Yet there it is.

3. Finally, why is it every time we actually have a good discussion, with varying points of view, someone has to tell us how naughty we are for not all agreeing with each other?

 

[Fading Fast]

I agree with that. It ought to be 25. Or, the rate we're going these days, maybe even 30.

Might be problematic for our military, but I appreciate your sentiment.

Kidding aside, having grown up in NJ, I saw the drinking age move for 17, to 18 to 21 in only a few years in the late 70s / early 80s (all from memory, so I might be a bit off). I do remember it being driven by teenage drunk driving stats and some high-profile deaths. The intent was to save lives; one outcome was that you could enlist (kill and be killed in a uniform), but not order a beer.

While I fall on the side that we should have one age - whatever age we collectively as a society decide - at which a person becomes an adult, I do understand the argument for different ages and how we got here.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think 25 actually makes sense from a medical/scientific point of view as well as a sociological one. There's increasing evidence that the parts of the human brain that control the ability to reason are not fully formed until the mid-twenties, and use of any intoxicant prior to that time can and does cause permanent damage to those pathways.

In any case, never mind "iegal" or "illegal." I think what's more important is for intoxication of any kind to be culturally and socially unacceptable. That was the real goal of the Prohibitionist movement, and I still think it's a laudable and appropriate goal today. The temperance movement wasn't about "spoiling everyone's fun," it was about putting an end to the cesspool of misery and poverty that drunkenness brought to turn-of-the-century society as a whole. The damage drugs have caused in modern society is even worse.

 

[vitanola]

Please everyone, I never meant to start an argument over personal liberty. I had written a lengthy counter point on the side of libertarianism, but remembered that this is a thread on things that weren't so great in the golden age... on a forum which is supposed to be a happy place. Normally the lounge is a nice place, but this is degenerating and some people are becoming rather cruel. Can we please all shake hands and get back to what we love: the golden age?

Another thing that wasn't so great in the golden age were total loss oil systems. While simple, it must of been rather inconvenient to have to keep filling up the engine with oil lest the engine seize.

Those were pretty much obsolete by 1910 or so. Even the Model T Ford was fitted with an oil sump which was shared by the engine and transmission, though after the pedal shafts, rings and valve guides sustained a few tens of thousands of miles of wear the oil consumption of a Fivver approached that of, say a Moden N Ford or a Model B Maxwell, both of which used "total loss" systems.

By the way, no cruelty was intended from this poster. There are strong arguments for even the most absolutist views of individual liberty. Fallacious arguments based of spurious "historical" data should be politely challenged on this forum particularly, don't you think?

I think what's more important is for intoxication of any kind to be culturally and socially unacceptable. That was the real goal of the Prohibitionist movement, and I still think it's a laudable and appropriate goal today.

Amen!

 

[vitanola]

I agree with that. It ought to be 25. Or, the rate we're going these days, maybe even 30.

I understand that in the Japan of old girls did not reach their years of discretion until they were fifty. The years between twenty-one and fifty were years of indiscretion.

 

[vitanola]

Might be problematic for our military, but I appreciate your sentiment.

Kidding aside, having grown up in NJ, I saw the drinking age move for 17, to 18 to 21 in only a few years in the late 70s / early 80s (all from memory, so I might be a bit off). I do remember it being driven by teenage drunk driving stats and some high-profile deaths. The intent was to save lives; one outcome was that you could enlist (kill and be killed in a uniform), but not order a beer.

While I fall on the side that we should have one age - whatever age we collectively as a society decide - at which a person becomes an adult, I do understand the argument for different ages and how we got here.

Sorry about your other post. It seemed to be admirable in every way.

Miss Maine brings up an important point when Che mentions the importance of social opprobrium as contrasted wit legal prohibition.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The only thing that Prohibition left as far as a lasting legacy is to enable organized crime to become, as Meyer Lansky boasted, "bigger than General Motors." When it was repealed, the apparatus that came about to provide the bootlegger's stock in trade simply adapted to provide other forbidden fruit.

"Temperance" movement leaders of the early 20th Century always seemed to have overlooked the most obvious solution in preventing an alcoholic husband or father from ruining a home: don't marry a drunk in the first place. The rest of the world is not responsible for the consequences of one's own stupidity in exercising lifestyle choices.

 

[vitanola]

"Temperance" movement leaders of the early 20th Century always seemed to have overlooked the most obvious solution in preventing an alcoholic husband or father from ruining a home: don't marry a drunk in the first place. The rest of the world is not responsible for the consequences of one's own stupidity in exercising lifestyle choices.

That suggestion is right up there with "Don't be born to poor parents" and "Don't get cancer".

It was not at all uncommon for a pleasant and sober husband do develop dipsomania later in life, nor is it yet.

 

[ChiTownScion]

That suggestion is right up there with "Don't be born to poor parents" and "Don't get cancer".

I wasn't aware that being born into poverty or acquiring cancer was a matter of choice. Although, in fairness, the probabilities of the latter can in some instances be enhanced through the choice of exposure to known carcinogens.

 

[tonyb]

... The rest of the world is not responsible for the consequences of one's own stupidity in exercising lifestyle choices.

Really? The "rest of the world" often lives with the consequences of the individual's "lifestyle choices." The individual becomes our responsibility, provided we aren't the sorts of people who would do nothing while a person chokes on his own vomit, or collapses in the street, or, in a less dramatic but more common scenario, makes a fool of himself and damages his family and wider support networks in his alcohol (or whatever) induced stupor.

I gave up the sauce when I gave up smokes, in '06. Before then, I drank quite a bit. Never got a DUI, never lost a job over it, rarely got into drunken squabbles and/or brawls (I don't care to be reminded of the lapses, though). I quit largely on the advice of a physician who plainly and convincingly laid out the evidence of my pending demise, should I not dramatically change my ways.

But I'm not so anti-intoxication as some who have weighed in here. In my view, there are times and places for it. In my case, those times are in the past. These days I find myself playing the role of Den Mother, Designated Driver, Cell Phone Confiscator (texting while drinking is rarely recommended), et cetera. People won't moderate their drinking because I wish them to. But I can mitigate some of the immediate hazards.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Really? The "rest of the world" often lives with the consequences of the individual's "lifestyle choices." The individual becomes our responsibility, provided we aren't the sorts of people who would do nothing while a person chokes on his own vomit, or collapses in the street, or, in a less dramatic but more common scenario, makes a fool of himself and damages his family and wider support networks in his alcohol (or whatever) induced stupor.

Precisely. I believe, quite firmly, that the Almighty Individual, who lives life on his own terms, wears no man's collar, and owes nothing to anyone else, is and has always been a myth. As long as we are part of civilization, we're part of a community -- and what harms the weakest member of that community, in the end, harms all of us. That was the dominant philosophy of the reformers of the Progressive Era, down thru the New Deal Era, and I think it remains a valid philosophy today.

It's always amused me how vigorously some people on this forum will condemn others for wearing a baseball cap to church, or in a restaurant, something which is, deep down, of absolutely no lasting harm or consequence to anyone -- but will find all sorts of ways of rationalizing or even defending practices which cause real, substantial harm to millions of people every day. Well, it used to amuse me, but now it just makes me sad. This generation really does have its priorities screwed up.

I don't expect any thing I say here will make much difference to anyone. But I do think that I've made a difference in the real world, with people who actually matter to me, and that, to me, is what really counts.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Precisely. I believe, quite firmly, that the Almighty Individual, who lives life on his own terms, wears no man's collar, and owes nothing to anyone else, is and has always been a myth. As long as we are part of civilization, we're part of a community -- and what harms the weakest member of that community, in the end, harms all of us.

Watch out. She's got a Hobbes and isn't afraid to use it.

 

[Vintage lover]

What do Emergency Room doctors call motorcyclists? Organ donors.

This is the kind of thing I had in mind when I used the word cruel. For some reason, somebody referring to me as an "organ donor" makes me a bit angry. There are a whole lot more car and truck drivers on the road who are unfit to adequately operate their two ton projectiles then there are unfit riders. I'll bet they are a bigger danger too.

On the issue of age restrictions: since 14, I have had easy access to every drug I wanted (the schools are flooded with them) and turned them all down. I was allowed to smoke pipe and cigars as well as drink in my own home since that age too. I can count the amount of times I have actually been drunk on one hand, and my pipe tobacco often goes bad before I can smoke half of it. My Mom treated those things in the same way my Grandpa did with her: she took the allure and mystery away. Laws won't make anybody stop doing anything or suddenly create responsibility; only good parenting can do that.

As somebody who had a step father with a complicated drug problem, I am against drug laws. As somebody who knows many LGBT people who are not stereotypical in the least, I am against any laws forcing somebody's idea of a "good" or "righteous" life on anybody else. Laws always come down to force. If you don't agree with a law that has been passed, too bad, you will comply or be carted away to a cell. The people who get outvoted or outgunned are the largest and most ignored minority on Earth. The way I see it, if somebody or some people are doing something that you would never know about unless you were prying into their lives, how is it anybody's business but their own? Why is force justified? That's how I feel anyway.

Thanks for the info on total loss oil systems; I love a good lesson. Brough Superiors and Model Ts were on my mind when I wrote about oil systems.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Watch out. She's got a Hobbes and isn't afraid to use it.

I'm a lot more Hobbes than I am Calvin.

 

[tonyb]

Well, "cruel" or not, it is indeed so that emergency room personnel often refer to two-wheeled motorized conveyances as "donor cycles." I recall a trip to the major regional trauma center's emergency room one sunny summer afternoon something like 30 years ago, where I had been transported courtesy of the Seattle Fire Department's Medic 1 system. I had been knocked unconscious when my motorcycle helmet collided with the driver's door of a car. (Yes, I had the right of way.)

Once there I got triaged into the outer hallway. Turns out that I wasn't nearly as badly injured as a young couple who had arrived shortly after me. They, too, had been out motorcycling that day. In that hallway was a poster showing a photo of a thoroughly mangled motorcycle and a caption reading "Buy Your Son a Motorcycle for His Last Birthday."

As I offered several posts back, I am on no way advocating against motorcycles. And, as I offered, a motorcyclist who never loses sight of just how quickly he can get severely injured is among the motorcyclists likelier to avoid such injury.

To the larger issue, VL, the consequences of individual choices are rarely limited to that individual. I like to be left to my own devices as well. And I like to think that my own judgment can be trusted. Don't we all? But unless we live as hermits, we all see people making poor decisions that negatively affect others. I see it every day. That's among the reasons I am not so absolutist as I once was. There's something to be said for most any political perspective, and there's something to be said against it. Reality does not bend to any person's vision of how things ought to be.

 

[sheeplady]

This is the kind of thing I had in mind when I used the word cruel. For some reason, somebody referring to me as an "organ donor" makes me a bit angry. There are a whole lot more car and truck drivers on the road who are unfit to adequately operate their two ton projectiles then there are unfit riders. I'll bet they are a bigger danger too.

I can understand that. It was meant as a joke, but it is not a very nice one. I have a cousin (by marriage) who was killed by a drunk driver (they found a fifth in the car that hit him). You should have seen the cruel comments on the news articles about how he, as a motorcycle driver and a winemaker, basically "deserved it." I have never read anything so sickening in my life.

I don't get all this nastiness towards motorcyclists.

I think the "Look twice, save a life" saying is so important. When I see a motorcyclist I am very careful to stay a safe distance away and watch out for sudden moves. A fender bender with a motorcyclist could mean killing someone.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the "Look twice, save a life" saying is so important. When I see a motorcyclist I am very careful to stay a safe distance away and watch out for sudden moves. A fender bender with a motorcyclist could mean killing someone.

The biggest blight on the public roads isn't motorcyclists, it's motorists who compensate for their own frustrations and inadequacies by driving "aggressively." Join the Y and learn to box if you're frustrated, don't take it out on people who just want to get to where they're going in one piece.

 

[vitanola]

The biggest blight on the public roads isn't motorcyclists, it's motorists who compensate for their own frustrations and inadequacies by driving "aggressively." Join the Y and learn to box if you're frustrated, don't take it out on people who just want to get to where they're going in one piece.

As a fellow who enjoys driving a Flivver, I once commonly joked that a 35MPH national speed limit would be a boon. Of course such a ridiculously low limit would be frustrating and unenforcable. On the other hand, perhaps an increase in the number of "points" awarded for the various crimes associated with aggressive driving might be helpful, whilst not penalizing the many careful and considerate drivers among us. Perhaps a miscreant who accumulates 2 aggressive driving charges (speeding, failure to yield, etc.) should be given conditional drivers licenses which allow them to drive nothing more powerful than a Citroen 2CV, or perhaps a Messerschmitt. This would allow the scofflaws to get to work and meet their social and child rearing obligations, but might also teach patience.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I got cut off at an intersection the other day in my '41 Dodge by some clown in a vintage British sportscar doing about 70 in a 40mph zone. *And we were the only two cars on the road.*

My passenger pointed out that he yelled something at me as he passed, but fortunately the roar of my own 85 hp engine drowned him out.

When I'm dictator guys like that will be sentenced to drive a '48 Crosley, painted pink.